a little coffee

I am still a coffee addict. Even though I drink mostly instant now as real coffee is hard to find.  And once you find it, be prepared to pay up the wazoo for it.  My wazoo wants to be left alone so I drink Ben Cafe instead, a fine alternative to the fried Nescafe.  

But what I’ve been missing lately are coffeeshops. Or anywhere to just go where I’ll be left alone to read and think about the crazy doodles outside of my cold apartment. Anyang hasn’t caught up to the Starbuck’s coffee culture yet so I just hide in my home. Another foreign teacher- a coffee fiend himself- told me that the local KFC (the one Western restaurant in town that I know of (it’s a little sad when you define Western food with Colonel Sanders ) serves coffee. Or, as Robert put it, “coffee-like products.”  

I’d been avoiding the local KFC- easy to do because it’s in the bustling city center which is an inconvenient distance from my apartment- because it’s greasy gross fast food.  Remembering those places from Little League and high-school, the neurons in my brain weren’t making the connection between coffee and peace with plastic booths, gooey ketchup dispensers, and the smell of fried hamburger patties. 

Come Saturday, after a day of wondering around the city of Kaifeng (we made it!  More later), Chris and I were desperate for food. We left massive Dragon Park in search of lunch hoping against hope that a Pizza Hut would appear from nowhere (we hadn’t had pizza in two months!). We wandered by the KFC thinking another fast food restaurant could be nearby. No. Expensive Chinese restaurants, construction, shops. No pizzas.  We were getting light headed. All the blisters on our feet were starting to pop. It’s tricky ordering food even with pictures so that left us with one quick option: KFC.

There, Chris and I devoured the first Western meal we’ve eaten in months. Codfingers and French fries, it was fried, greasy goodness. My revulsion for fast food evaporated. Our nod to China was the vegetable and egg soup we also ordered.  This small meal was twice as expensive as a normal Chinese meal would have been, but we didn’t care.  And I had coffee.

The second we entered the toasty restaurant, I saw the coffee machine and a happy skip rushed through my body.  Coffee!  This was only the second place I knew of within my reach the served coffee in this land of tea and bean milk. Delicious burnt coffee doused with cream and sugar.  The first place was McDonald’s, where Chris and I stopped on the way to Dragon Park that morning because now when I think of places to go for coffee, it’s not the new coffeeshop down the street, but the American fast food joint- the decadent nod to Western cuisine. 

Chris and I ate our meal in peace at the rear of the restaurant, and I realized Robert was right. This is one place you can go without being bothered. There’s always a waitstaff to deal with in other restaurants, who, no matter how many times you say “I don’t understand” or how often you point at a picture or the name of the food you need, are still there, hovering, waiting to be paid, and staring at your awesome, obvious foreignness. 

KFC was also, unquestionably, the cleanest restaurant we’d been in. And the toilets were heavenly. Granted my hopes of an actual toilet were quickly dashed, the bathroom did have uncommon conveniences like soap and toilet paper. 

And then a connection: when I go to the KFC in Anyang (because I will now) I already know exactly what I want, and I will get exactly what I want. Not the cabbage with chili pepper instead of the friend vermicelli with chili. If I order coffee and fries, it will magically appear on the try in front of me. So many previous experiences have been pure guess work. Somehow even pointing at a picture of noodles with vegetables turns arrives at the table as spicy potatoes.  I’m not sure how this happens and it’s nearly impossible to get them to understand that no, this is not what I ordered. May I please have this?

That wasn’t the end to our Western Food Feast. We found a pizza place that served surprisingly delicious pizza. Not quite saucy enough but covered in a thick layer of real, damn good cheese. And, the highlight: a cappuccino. Either my memory of taste had faded (which, I admit, is possible with all the instant coffee I’ve been drinking) or that really was a perfect cappuccino. Yes, Chris.  If I wasn’t terrified of navigating Doodle Land without you, it would have been the cappuccino and I together forever.